Jacques Lacan

Geneva lecture on the symptom

A transcript of this lecture was sent to me by Mario Cifali. After

having verified the text, I happily agreed to his request to authorise itspublication in his journal. Le Bloc-Notes de La psychanalyse.According to the information he gave me, the lecture, advertisedunder the title 'The Symptom', was delivered 4th October 1975 at theCentre Raymond de Saussure, at a study week-end organised by theSwiss Society of Psychoamlysis, to an audience consisting of membersand guests of the Society; it was introduced by Olivier Flournoy.A note indicates where there is a passage missing.Jacques-Alain Miller

I shan't start without thanking Olivier Flournoy for having invited me here,which gives me the privilege of addressing you.It seemed to me that, from when I began my practice, I have owed you atleast a word of explanation-a word of explanation about the fact that Ipracticed first and then one day started to teach.I really had no need to teach. I started at the time that what has since beencalled the Psychoanalytic Institute of Paris was founded-founded in thename of a take-over by someone who had, indeed, no great claim to this role.I did it solely because at the time, which was a time of crisis-it was, inshort, the setting up of a kind of dictatorship-, a group of these people,psychoanalysts, who were emerging from the war-it had taken them eightyears to emerge from it nevertheless, since this foundation was in 1953-agroup asked me to start speaking.At the time there was a professor of psychiatry at [the hospital] SainteAnne, since then a member of the Acadkmie Franpzise, who invited me there.He had been psychoanalyzed, supposedly, but really, his Jeunesse d'AndrkGide doesn't bear this out. and he wasn't very enthusiastic about playing arole in psychoanalysis. Thus he was only too happy, after ten years, not somuch to give me notice, since it was rather I who gave him notice, as to seeme leave.

8 The symptomThen a new crisis broke out, due, my God, to a sort of aspiring, with akind of empty fuss, to the level of the International [PsychoanalyticAssociation]. There's something here that Joyce, who is on the list of mycurrent preoccupations, symbolises with the English word suck-it is thenoise that the lavatory makes when you pull the chain, when it sinks downthe hole.This is not a bad metaphor for the function of this International such asFreud wanted it. It must be remembered that he was led, by his belief thatthere was no guarantee that immediately after his death his thought would besafeguarded, to confide his thought in no other person than his own daughter.It can't be said, can it, that this daughter is directly aligned with Freudhimself? The so-called Mechanisms of Defense she produced doesn't seem tome to be any proof that she continues in the same line as Freud. Far from it.I thus found myself in 1953 beginning a seminar, which a certain numberof you, Olivier Flournoy tells me, have followed. This seminar is nothingbut the collection I left in the hands of Jacques-Alain Miller, who is fairlyclose to me. I left it in his hands because this seminar was a bit distant fromme, and if I had reread it, I would have rewritten it, or at the very least, Iwould have simply written it.Writing is not at all the same as speaking, they're not similar at all. Iwill illustrate this a bit later. It so happens that during the time I was atSainte Anne I wanted something of what I was saying to remain. At thattime a review appeared in which I used to write, in the strict sense of theterm.l I published a collection of the articles that had appeared in this review.As I had also written quite a few things before then, half of this collection ismade up of these previous writings--which are writings [kcrits] properly socalled, hence my title, simply Ecrits. Someone I know, a charming youngwoman, who is Japanese, was a bit shocked by this title. The resonance ofthe word kcrit probably isn't the same in Japanese and French. By kcrits Isimply wanted to point out that it was in some sense the residue of myteaching.Roughly once a year, I used to publish a writing in this review, LaPsychanalyse, one that was intended to preserve something of the turmoil[remous] that my word had created, in order to retain an apparatus that onecould refer to. I did this with the idea in mind that, after all, it could haveserved as a reference point for me with respect to the Internalional. To be surethey laugh at all these writings--and after all, they are right, since psychoSeven issues of the review La psychanalyse appeared between 1956 and

1962.

Jacques Lacan 9analysis is something quite different from writing. However, it would perhaps not be a bad thing that the analyst give some sort of proof that heknows what he is doing. If he does something, if he speaks, it would perhapsnot be unreasonable to expect him, in a certain sense, to testify to what hedoes.Nor is it unreasonable to hope that he thinks about what he is doing. Hethinks from time to time. He thinks sometimes. This is in no wayobligatory. I don't give any connotation of value to the term 'thinking'. Iwould go even further than this-if there is anything I have claimed, it isvery much of a kind to reassure the analyst of what could be called hisautomatism. I think that ultimately one gets bogged down in thought. Andpsychoanalysts know this better than anyone. One gets bogged down in whatI have described as the imaginary, and an entire philosophical tradition hasobserved this perfectly well. If man-it seems banal to say this-did nothave what is called a body, I'm not going to say that he would not think,since that's obvious, but he would not be profoundly captivated by the imageof this body.Man is captivated by the image of his body. This point explains manythings, the first of which is the privileged position that this body holds forhim. His world, assuming that this word has a meaning, his Urnwell, whatthere is around him. he corpo-reifies it, he makes it a thing in the image ofhis body. He does not have the slightest idea, of course, of what happensinside this body. How does a body survive? I don't know whether you arestruck by this in any way-when you get scratched, it heals. This is just assurprising as, no more or less than, the fact that the lizard that loses its tailgrows a new one. It is of exactly the same order.It is by means of the look, to which Olivier Flournoy was referringbefore, that this body carries weight. The majority-but not all-of whatman thinks stems from there. It is really very difficult for an analyst, givenwhat he is dealing with, not to be sucked in-in the way I was refemng tobefore-by the glug-glug of the escaping water, of this thing that captivateshim, ultimately. narcissistically, in the discourse of what Olivier Flournoywas calling-unfortunately-theanalysed [analysc!l.Why this is unfortunateis that it is now some time that the term 'analysand' [analysanf],which Iproposed in my seminar one day, caught on. Not only in my School-Iwould only attach relative importance to that, relative to me-but it came asa son of thunderclap the very week I formulated it, this 'analysand'. ThePsychoanaly~icInsfifufeof Paris, which is very up to date with everything Irecount-I would go even further, what I say is the main thing that is taught

10 The symptom

there-this Institute relished this 'analysand' that fitted them like a glo"e,even if it was only used to relieve the analyst of his responsibility for theanalysis when the occasion arises.I must say that when I put this thing forward I was only parodying-if Ican put it like that, since an entire tradition is of the order of parody-theterm 'analysand', current in English. Of course, it isn't strictly equivalent tothe French term. [The English] 'analysand' evokes more the to-be-analysed,and that is not what I meant at all. What I meant was that in analysis theperson who truly comes to formulate a request for an analysis [demanded'analyse] is the one who does the w o r k d n condition that you haven't puthim on the couch straightaway, in which case you've ruined it. It is essentialthat this request has really taken shape before you get him to lie down. Whenyou tell him to start-and this must be neither the frrst nor the second time,at least if you want to conduct yourself with dignity-the person, then, whomakes this request for an analysis, when he starts to work, is the one whodoes the work. You are not to consider him at all as someone that you haveto mould. It is the exact opposite of this. What is it that you are doing? Thisquestion is the reason for everything I have enquired about ever since I began.I began, my God, I would say, in all innocence. I mean that I didn't knowwhat I was doing, as what followed proved-proved to my mind. Would Ihave had second thoughts if I had known what it was I was undertaking? Ifeel certain I would have. This is why at the final point, that is, at the lateststage I had got to at the beginning of the academic year in 1967, in October,I instituted that thing that consists in asserting that when someone setshimself up as analyst, no one else can do it for him. This seems to me to bea self-evident truth.When someone sets himself up as analyst, he is free in that kind ofinauguration, which I introduced and which I called the Proposal. He is free,he can also refrain from doing it, and keep things to himself, but he is alsofree to volunteer for this trial of coming and confiding things-onfidingthem to people that I chose on purpose because they are at the same point ashe is.It is obvious that if he addresses himself to an older person, to one who isregistered [titularis6J,or even to someone called a training analyst, you canbe sure that his testimony will miss the point entirely. Because, frrst, heknows perfectly well that the poor idiot he is addressing has matured suchthat he, just like me, has absolutely no idea why he entered this profession ofbeing an analyst. I myself can remember why a little, and I regret it. But onthe whole they have completely forgotten. All they see is their position of

Jacques Lacan 11authority, and in these conditions one tries to place oneself on the samefooting as the authority--that is to say, one lies, quite simply. So I tried toensure that they always address themselves to beginners like themselves.Despite everything. I retained--one always has to beware of innovating.it's not like me, I've never innovated in anything-a son of panel establishedout of the consent of all. There is nothing more striking than this-if youelect any panel whatsoever, if you get people to vote, by secret ballot, theresult is the names of people who are already perfectly well identified. Thegroup wants leaders. It is already a piece of good fortune if the group wantsmore than one. So, the group that wants leaders elects those who are alreadythere through the way things function. The people who have received thetestimony of those who want to be analysts testify to this panel.In the spirit of my Proposal, this exercise is carried out so as to cast lightupon what happens at this point [of deciding to become an analyst]. It'sexactly as Freud said-when we have a case [casl, what is called a case, inanalysis, he recommends that one not place it in a pigeon-hole [casier] inadvance. He would like us to listen, if I may say so, entirely independently ofany knowledge [connaissances] we have acquired, to be aware of what we aredealing with. namely the particularity of the case. This is very difficultbecause obviously the nature of experience is to prepare a pigeon-hole. It isvery difficult for us analysts, men, or women, of experience, not to makejudgements about a case in the process of functioning and to develop theanalysis, of not calling other cases to mind concerning it. Whatever oursupposed freedom-since it is impossible to believe in this freedom-it isclear that we are unable to obliterate our experience. Freud insists upon this agreat deal, and if it were better understood we would have the path to acompletely different type of intervention-but this cannot be.It was, then, in this spirit that I wanted a person who was at the samelevel as the one crossing this threshold to be a witness. In short, it wasdesigned to enlighten us. It happens from time to time that a person's testimony has the character-ndit is possible to recognize it--of authenticity.So I made it possible for this person to be accepted at a level at which thereare supposed to be people who think about what they are doing, in such away as to son them out. What immediately became of this? Of course, itbecame another mode of selection. That is, people who testified in allhonesty to what they had done in their analysis, retroactively called a traininganalysis, felt a bit miffed if, following their testimony. they didn't belong tothat by means of which I tried to enlarge the group of those able to reflect abit on what they are doing. They feel devalued, whatever I do to prevent this

12 The symptomoccurring. I try to explain to them that their testimony has contributedsomething about a certain way of becoming an analyst by having beentrained in whatever it is that is required of them. What can be demanded ofthem is obviously to have passed through that experience. How can it betransmitted if you haven't been subjected to it yourself? Well, anyway . . .I would like to mention Freud's remark, Sol1 Ich Werden, which I havestressed more than once? Werden, what does that mean? It is very difficult totranslate. It goes towards something. Is this something the den? Is Werden abecoming green, a verdification? What is there in the German becoming?Each language has its own genius and translating Wer&n by devenir reallycarries weight only in so far as den is already in devenir. It is something ofthe order of destitution, if it can be put like that. Destitution [dtnuement] isnot the same thing as outcome [dtnouement]. But let's leave that up in theair.What is at issue is to evaluate what Freud-a very surprising thing on thepart of a man so thoroughly a practitioner-nlyemphasised in the first partof his work, in this first stage that ends around 1914, before the First WorldWar-in his Traumdeutung, in his Psychopathology of Everyday Life, and inhis Jokes in particular. He emphasised this, and it is surprising that he didn'tput his finger on it, it is that his hypothesis of the Unbewusstsein, of theunconscious, if one can say so, is poorly named.The unconscious is not only being un-known. Freud himself had alreadyformulated it in saying Bewusst. I am exploiting the German language here,in which a relationship can be established between Bewusst and Wissen. Inthe German language the conscious of consciousness is formulated as what itreally is, namely the enjoyment ~ouissance]of knowledge [savoir].Freud'scontribution is this, that there is no need to know what one knows to enjoyknowledge.Let's turn to our everyday experience. If what we say is m e , if it is indeedat an early stage that what we must call by their name, that is, symptoms,crystallise, if the period of infancy is indeed decisive for that, how can thisfact fail to be linked to the manner in which we analyse dreams and bungledactions? I won't mention jokes, completely outside the range of analysts whonaturally do not have the slightest humour. That's Freud, but it proves all thesame that here Freud, nevertheless, must have observed that the statement ina bungled action gets value only from the explanations given by the subject.How does one interpret a bungled action? We would be completely in theThe transcript of part of the lecture is missing at this point.

Jacques Lacan 13dark if the subject didn't say one or two things about it, which make itpossible to say, 'But then, when you took your own key out of your pocketto enter my, the analyst's, place, it has meaning all the same', and accordingto his state of progress, the meaning will be explained to him in one ofseveral ways-either by the fact that he thinks he is entering his own home,or that he wants to enter his own home, or even a bit further on, that the factof inserting the key into the lock proves something symbolic that has to dowith keys and locks. The symbolism of the Traumdeutung is cut fromexactly the same cloth. What are these dreams if they're not recounteddreams? It is in the unfolding of the report that what Freud calls theirmeaning is read. How can one sustain a hypothesis such as that of theunconscious, unless one sees that it is the manner in which the subject, ifindeed there is such a thing as a subject that is not divided, is impregnated, asit were, by language?We well know in analysis the importance the way a subject was desiredhas for him or her, I mean who at that moment was still nothing at all.There are people who live under the threat, and this will last their whole life,under the threat that one of the two parents-I won't say which--did notdesire them. That's what our everyday text is.Parents mould the subject in this function that I call symbolism. Strictlyspeaking this means, not that the child is in any way the basis of a symbol,but that the way in which a mode of speaking has been instilled in him canonly bear the mark of the mode in which his parents have accepted him. Iwell know that this can have all sorts of variations, and fortunes. Even anundesired child may, in the name of whatever it is that may arise from hisfirst wriggles, be more welcome later on. This won't prevent from beingretained some mark of the fact that the desire didn't exist before a certain date.How could people fail to appreciate before Freud that these people calledmen, or women on occasion, inhabit talking? It is very odd for people whobelieve they think not to realise that they think with words. There are thingsthere that have to come to an end, don't you agree? The thesis of theWiirzburg School, on the so-called apperception of I know not what syntheticthought that isn't articulated, is really the most delusional that a school ofsupposed psychologists has ever produced. It is always with the help ofwords that man thinks. And it is in the encounter between these words andhis body that something takes shape. Moreover, I would even use the term'innate' in this respect-if there were no words, what could man bear witnessto? This is where he places meaning.

14 The symptomI tried, as much as I could, to bring alive again something that didn'tcome from me, but that had already been perceived by the old Stoics. There isno reason to think that philosophy has always been the same thing as it isfor us. In those times philosophy was a way of life-a way of lifeconcerning which it could be perceived. well before Freud, that language, thislanguage that has absolutely no theoretical existence, always intervenes inthe form of what I call--using a word that I have wanted to make as close aspossible to the word 'lallation'. 'babblingq-'lalangue', 'llanguage'?Llanguage. The Greeks, from the time of Aesop on, were well aware thatit was of absolutely capital importance. There is a well-known fable on thistopic, but nobody notices it. It is no coincidence at all that, whateverllanguage it is that one receives the first imprint of, words are equivocal. It iscertainly no coincidence that in French the word 'ne'. 'not', is pronounced thesame as the word 'noeud, 'knot'. It is no coincidence at all that the word 'pas','not', which in French, contrary to many other languages, doubles thenegation, also designates un pas, a step. If I am so interested in 'pas','notTstep', it is not by chance. This doesn't mean that llanguage in any wayconstitutes a heritage. It is absolutely certain that it is in the way in whichllanguage has been spoken and also heard as such, in its particularity, thatsomething will subsequently emerge in dreams, in all sorts of mistakes, inall manners of speaking. It is in this materialism, if you will allow me touse this word for the first time, that the unconscious takes hold.4 What Imean is that here there resides what it is that prevents anyone from findinganother way of nourishing what just before I called the symptom.Read a bit of the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Freud'sVorlesungeeI'm sure this doesn't happen to you very often. There are twochapters on the symptom. One's called Wege zur Symptom Bildung [Paths toSymptom Formation], it's the chapter 23, then you will see that there is achapter 17 called Der Sinn, the meaning, of symptoms. If there is anycontribution Freud has made, this is it. It's that symptoms have a meaning,and a meaning that can only be interpreted correctly-'correctly' meaning thatthe subject lets some of it g o - a s a function of his early experiences, namelyin so far as he encounters what today I am going to call, through lack ofbeing able to say anything more or anything better, sexual reality.Freud placed a lot of emphasis on this. And he thought, notably, that theterm 'autoeroticism' needed to be accentuated, in the sense that the childZalangue' joins article and noun.'Motbialisme'. Mot means word.

Jacques Lacan l5initially discovers this .sexual reality on his own body. I pennit myself-thisdoesn't happen every clay-to disagree-and in the name of Freud's workitself.If you study the case of little Hans closely, you will see that what appearsthere is that what he calls his Wiwimacher, because he doesn't know how tocall it anything else, is introduced into his circuit. In other words, to callthings quietly by their name, he has his first erections. This first enjoyment[jouir] manifests itself, it could be said, in everyone. Is this, if not true ofeveryone, then verified in everyone? But this is precisely the point of Freud'scontribution-its being verified in certain people is enough for us to be in aposition to construct something upon it that has the closest of connectionswith the unconscious. For it's a fact, after all, that the unconscious is Freud'sinvention. The unconscious is an invention in the sense of a discovery.which is linked to the encounter that certain beings have with their ownerection.Being, this is what we call it, because we don't know how to say it anydifferently. It would be better to do without the word 'being'. Some peoplehave in the past been sensitive to this. A certain Saint Thomas Aquinas-heis a holy man [saint homme] and even a symptom [symptdmel-wrotesomething called De ente et essentia [On Being and Essence]. I can't say Irecommend that you read it, because you won't, but it's very astute. If thereis something called the unconscious, it means that one doesn't have to knowwhat one is doing in order to do it, and in order to do it while knowing it fullwell. Perhaps there is someone here who will read De ente et essentia andwho will see what this holy man, this symptom, works out very wellbeing is not grasped so easily. nor is essence.There's no need to know all that. One only needs to know that withcertain beings, whatever they are called, the encounter with their own erectionis not at all autoerotic. It is the most hetero thing there is. They askthemselves, 'But what is this?' And they wonder about it so much that thispoor little Hans thinks of nothing else and incarnates it in the most externalof all objects, namely in this horse that paws the ground, that kicks, rollsover and falls to the ground. This horse that comes and goes, that has acertain way of drawing a cart along the quay, is for him the most exemplarything of everything he is caught up in, but that he understands absolutelynothing of, owing to the fact, to be sure, that he has a certain type of motherand a certain type of father. His symptom is the expression, the meaning ofthis rejection.

16 The symptomThis rejection does not deserve to be labelled 'autoeroticism', under thesole pretext that after all this Wiwimacher is somewhere stuck onto him,below his belly. The enjoyment that has resulted from this Wiwimacher isalien to him-so much so that it is at the root of his phobia. 'Phobia' meanshe has got the wind up. The intervention of Professor Freud mediated by thefather is entirely faked, and has one single benefit-that it worked. He willend up having his little prick borne by someone else, namely his little sister.I abbreviate the case of little Hans. I only introduce it because, since youare in total ignorance, I don't see why I shouldn't have improvised totallytoday. I won't get round to reading out all the things I've cooked up for youtoday. I simply want to try to convey something of what happened, towardsthe end of the last century with someone who was not a genius, as peoplesay, but an honest imbecile, like me.Freud observed that there were things of which no one could say that thespeaking subject knew them without knowing them. There you have thingshighlighted. That's why I spoke of the signifier and of its signified effect[effet de signifid. Naturally, with the signifier I have not completelyexhausted the question. The signifier is something embodied in language. Itjust so happens that there exists a species that has learnt how to bark in sucha way that one sound, qua signifier, is different from another. OlivierFlournoy told me he has published an article by Spitz. Read his On the Birthof Speech to try to see how the relationship with barking arises. There is anabyss between this relation to barking and the fact that in the end, thehumiliated being, the humus being, the human being, or whatever you wantto call it-I'm talking about you and me-that the human being manages tobe able to say something. Not only is he able to say it, but moreover thisulcer, as I define language because I don't know what else to call it, thisulcerous language implies a kind of sensitivity right from the start.I have observed a number of small children closely, even if they wereonly my own. The fact that a child says, perhaps, not yet, before he is ableto construct a sentence properly, proves that there is something in himthrough which everything is sieved, whereby the water of language happensto leave something behind as it passes, some detritus which he will playwith, indeed which he will be forced to cope with. This is what all this nonreflected activity leaves him with-debris. to which, later on, because he ispremature, there will be added problems that will frighten him. Owing to thishe will, as it were, coalesce this sexual reality and language.

Jacques Lacan 17Allow me to advance some humble equations, concerning what I putforward in my Ecrits as the meaning of the phallus, which is a very badtranslation of Die Bedeutung des Phallus.It is surprising that psychoanalysis hasn't in any way provided anystimulation to psychology. Freud did everything in his power, but of coursepsychologists are deaf. This thing exists only in the vocabulary ofpsychologists-a psyche as such glued on to a body. Why in the devil[diable],if you will excuse the pun, why in the devil would man be double[double]? The fact that he has a body disguises enough mysteries, and Freud,guided by the path opened up by biology, differentiated between soma andgerm fairly well. Why in the devil don't we get this feeble psychology out ofour mind and try to spell out what there is in the Bedeutung of the phallus? Ihad to translate it as meaning [signification],through lack of any equivalent.Bedeutung is different from Sinn, from the sense effect, and designates therelation to the real. Why, ever since psychoanalysis has existed, have thequestions not been addressed at this level? Why did this so-called being, whydid this 'enjoys itself ['se jouitl, appear on what is called the earth? Weimagine that this is a privileged heavenly body on the pretext that man existsthere, and in a certain way it is h u e - o n the one condition there are no otherinhabited worlds.Does it not occur to you that what is specific to man in 'sexual reality',as I put it just before, is that between male and female man there is noinstinctual rapport? That nothing makes it the case that all men-todesignate man by what suits him reasonably well, given that he imagines theidea of the all naturally--that not all men are suited to satisfy every woman?This does indeed seem to be the rule for how things are with other animals.Obviously, not every male satisfies every female, but it is just a question ofwhether they are suited to do so or not. Man has to make do with dreamingabout it. He has to make do with dreaming about it because it is quite certainthat not only does he not satisfy every woman, but that Woman-I ask anymembers of the Women's Liberation Movement who may be present toexcuse me--Woman does not exist. There are women, but Woman is a dreamof men.It is not for nothing that man is happy with one, or even several, only. Itis because he doesn't desire the others. Why does he have no desire for theothers? Because they are not consonant, if 1 can put it like this, with hisunconscious.It is not only that there is no Woman, Woman defined as being whatsome time ago I pinned down, and now repeat for you, as not-All [pm-toutel.

18 The symptomThis goes further, and it doesn't come from man, contrary to what membersof the Women's Liberation Movement believe, it comes from themselves. Itis within themselves that they are not-All-namely, that they do not lendthemselves to generalization. Not even, I say this parenthetically, tophallocentric generalization.I didn't say that woman is an object for man. On the contrary, I said thathere is something he never knows how to cope with. In other words, henever fails to burn his fingers whenever he approaches any whatever-itherbecause he has made a mistake, or because she is precisely the one for him.But he only ever realises this after the event.This is one of the meanings of 'aprds coup', 'after the event', which I havespoken about on occasion, and which was so poorly conveyed in the famousand eternal Language of Psychoanalysis by which Lagache has ruined [a Idgdchk] psychoanalysis in its entirety. Well, all right, it isn't as bad as allthat, let's not exaggerate. Probably the only thing that was of interest to himwas to lagache what I said. After all, why wouldn't one lagache it?5I am not absolutely sure I am right about everything. Not only am I notsure, but I really do have the Freudian attitude. The next thing that causes meto revise my system, on the appropriate occasion, I would ask for nothingmore than to gather it up. All I can say is that, thanks no doubt to mystupidity, this hasn't yet happened.There you are. NOW it is over to you.I would be happy, after all this chatter, to know what you've got out ofit.Questions and replles

J.L.: To encourage whoever may have a question to raise, I would like to

say that someone who had a train to catch, I don't know where for. . .-:For Lausanne.-:You know who it is?-:Dr Bovet.-:That name is not unknown to me. Dr Bovet asked me a questionthat I think is a good one, manner of speaking. Up to what point, he said tome, do you take yourself seriously? That's not bad, and I hope it willencourage you. It is the type of question that I couldn't care less about. Tocontinue for so long as to be at the twenty-second year of my teachingAlthough The Language of Psychoanalysis is by Jean Laplanche and J.-B.Pontalis, the work was conceived and begun by Daniel Lagache.

Jacques Lacan 19implies that I take myself seriously. If I didn't answer, it was because he hada train to catch. But I've already answered the question, implicitly, byidentifying the serious with the series. A mathematical series, whetherconvergent or divergent, means something. What I announce is of the sameorder. utterly. I am trying to get closer and closer, to construct a convergentseries. Am I succeeding? Naturally, when one is captivated. . . . But even adivergent series is interesting, in its own way. it converges too-this is forthe people who have some idea of mathematics. Since this concerns DrBovet, would someone please convey my reply to him?Dr Cramer: You said, i f 1 understood you correctly, that it is the motherthat speaks to the child, though the child still has to hear her. It is about this'though the child still has to hear her' that I would like to ask you a question.-:Yes!-:What makes a child able to hear? What makes a child receptive to asymbolic order that his mother teaches him? Is there something immanentthere in the human child?-:In what I said it seems to me that I implied it. The being that Icalled human is essentially a speaking being.-:And a being that must be able to hear as well.-:But hearing is a part of speech. What I mentioned concerning theperhaps, the not yet, other examples could be cited, proves that the resonanceof speech is something constitutional. It is obvious that this is linked to thespecificity of my experience. From the moment at which someone is inanalysis he always shows that he has heard. To be sure, the question that youraise whether there might be people who hear nothing is suggestive, but it isdifficult to imagine. Perhaps you will tell me that there are people who hearonly a hub-hub, that is, all around them there is chatter.-:I was thinking of autism, for instance. This would be a case inwhich the receiver is not in place, and in which hearing doesn't work.-:As the name indicates, autistics hear themselves. They hear lots ofthings. Normally this even leads to hallucination, and hallucinations havealways a more or less vocal character. Not all autistics hear voices, but theyarticulate lots of things, and what they articulate, it is a matter of discoveringwhere they heard it. Do you see autistics?-:Yes.-:Well, what do you make of autistics, then?-:That precisely they don't manage to hear us, that they remainstuck.

20 The symptom-:But that's quite different. They don't manage to hear what you haveto say to them, in so far as you are caring for them.-:But also that we have trouble hearing them. Their languageremains something closed off.-:That's precisely what prevents us from hearing them. It's that theydo not hear you. But, in the end, surely there is something to say to them.-:My question goes a bit further. Is the symbolic4 am going totake a short-circuiclearnable? Is there something in us from birth whichmakes us ready for the symbolic, to receive precisely the symbolic message,to integrate it?: Everything I said implies this. It is a matter of knowing why thereis something in the autistic or in the schizophrenic which freezes, if I can putit like that. But you can't say that he doesn't speak. That you have troublehearing, grasping the point of what they say, doesn't prevent these peoplefrom being rather verbose.-:Do you conceive of language as being not only verbal but alsonon-verbal? The language of gestures,for instance?-:That question was raised a very long time ago by someone calledJousse, namely that gestures precede speech. I think that speech hassomething specific. Verbal structure is altogether specific, and we haveevidence for this in the fact that those known as deaf mutes are capable of atype of gesture that is in no way the expressive gesture as such. The case ofdeaf mutes is illustrative of the fact that there is a predisposition to language,even in those affected by that infirmity-to me the word 'infirmity' seemsaltogether specific here. There is a perception that there can be somethingsignificant as such. Sign language is not conceivable without apredisposition to acquire the signifier, whatever the bodily infirmity. Ihaven't mentioned the difference between signifier and sign.0.Flournoy: I think M. Auber would be happy for you perhaps toelaborate a bit on the difference that you have just mentioned.: That's a big question, on what is specific to the signifier. The signis typically found in a cycle of manifestation that one may, more or lessjustifiably, call external. It is the no smoke without fire. That the sign isimmediately grasped like this-if there is a fire, it's because there is someonewho lit it. Even if it's remarked after the event that the forest is burningwithout anyone being responsible for it. The sign always drifts, immediately,towards the subject and towards the signifier. The sign is immediatelygrasped as intentional. It is not the signifier. The signifier is from the startperceived as a signifier.

Jacques Lacan 21-:In the course of what was said, you made some remarks aboutwoman that I found very fine. Such as, Woman does not exist, there arewomen. Woman is a dream of man.'-:This is a dream because he can't do any better.-:Or again, Woman is what man never knows how to cope with'. Itseems to me that in the title of your lecture one was talking of the symptom,and Ifinally got the impression that woman is man's symptom.-:I've spelt this out in my seminar.-:Could one say reciprocally that man is the symptom of woman?Does this signify that in the little girl and little boy the message that themother transmits, the symbolic message, signifer, will be received from thesame thing, because it's the mother who transmits it, whether to the girl orto the boy? Is there a reciprocity, or a dfference from which one can't escape?-:There's surely a difference, which stems from the fact that womenunderstand very well that man is a strange bird. You've got to evaluate this atthe level of women analysts. Women analysts are better. They're better thanmen analysts.-:What ultimately is this relationship with the signifier that has theappearance of being something nuns-sexual, bisexual?M. X.: Women are better analysts. Better in what way? Better how?-:It's clear that they are much more active. There aren't manyanalysts who give evidence of understanding something. Women makeprogress. You only have to look at Melanie Klein. Women get on with it,and they get on with it with an altogether direct feeling of what the baby inman is. Men require a rude shattering.M. X.: Men also want to have children.-:Sometimes, they want to give birth, it's true. From time to timethere are men who, for reasons that are always quite specific, identify withthe mother. They wanf not only to have a baby, but to carry a child, that'sfairly common. In my analytic experience I've got five or six quite clearcases, who were able to formulate it.M. Vauthier: As an analyst, have you had the opportunity for closecontact with psychosomatic patients? What's the position of the signifer inrelation to them? What's their position in relation to their accession to thesymbolic? One gets the impression that they haven't touched the symbolicregister, or it's not known how to hook on to it. I would like to know if inyour way of raising the problem, you have a formula that can be applied tothis type of patient?

22 The symptom-:Certainly this is one of the most unexplored areas. Still, it's withinthe order of the written nevertheless. In many cases we don't know how toread it. Something would have to be said here to introduce the notion of thewritten. Everything happens as if something were written in the body,something that's given as an enigma. It's not at all astonishing that asanalysts we have this feeling.-:But how does one get them to speak what is written? There, itseems to me, there is a rupntre.-:That's quite true. There's what the mystics call the signature ofthings, what there is in things that can be read. Signatura doesn't meansignum, does it? There's something to be read faced with which, often, we areat seaM. Nicolaidis: Could one say that the psychosomatic expresses himselfin a hieroglyphic language, whereas the neurotic does it in an alphabeticlanguage?-:But that's Vico.-:One's never the first.-:Sure, one's never the first, there is always someone who has saidit.-:Still, he didn't speak'about psychosomatics.-:Vico? Definitely not. But then, come at the thing from this angle.Yes, the body considered as a camidge, as delivering the proper noun. Therewould have to be an idea of the hieroglyph that was a bit more developedthan Vico's. When he says hieroglyphics he doesn't seem to have-I've readthe Scienza nuova-very developed ideas for his time.0.Flournoy: I would like our women friends to say a word. Mme.Rossier. Let there be intersexual dialogue.Mme. Rossier: I wanted to say that while you were speaking, discussingpsychosomatics, of something written [d'Ccrit], I understood cries [des cris],the cry. And I wondered whether the inscription in the body ofpsychosomatics does not resemble a cry more than something spoken, andwhether that's why we have trouble understanding it. It's a repetitive butunder-developed cry. I would not at all think of a hieroglyph, which alreadyseems much more complicated to me.-:It's rather complicated, a psychosomatic illness. and it resembles ahieroglyph more than a cry.0.Flournoy: And yet, a cry is devilishly diflcult to translate.-:That's true.

Jacques Lacan 23M. Vauthier: One always attributes a signifier to a cry. Whereas thepsychosomatic, one would dearly love to be able to attribute a signifier tohim.-:Freud speaks of the cry at a certain moment. I would have to find itagain for you. He speaks of the cry, but nothing comes of it.Mme. Y: The difference between the written word and the spoken word?You gave the impression of having had some thoughts on this matter.-:It's certain that here there is, in effect, an altogether striking gap.How is it that orthography exists? It is the most stupefying thing in theworld, and that moreover it is manifestly through writing that speech makesits opening, through writing and uniquely through writing, the writing ofwhat are called figures [les chiffres], because no one wants to speak ofnumbers. There's something there that's of the same order as what was raisedas a question a while ag-fthe order of something immanent. The bodyin the signifier leaves a trait, and a trait that is a One. I translated the eintigerZug that Freud wrote in his paper on identification as unary trait6. It's thisunary trait that the whole question of the written revolves around. Whetherthe hieroglyph is Egyptian or Chinese is in this respect the same. It's alwaysa question of a configuration of the trait. It is not for nothing that the binarynumeration is written only with ones and zeros. The question should beassessed at this level-what is the son of enjoyment [jouissancel that's foundin psychosomatics? If I used a metaphor likefioten, it's indeed because therecertainly is that species of fixation. It is not for nothing, either, that Freuduses the term Fixierung-it's because the body lets itself go to writesomething of the order of the number.M. Vauthier: There is something paradoxical. When one gets theimpression that the word enjoyment takes up meaning again with apsychosomatic, he is no longer psychosomatic.-:I quite agree. It's from this angle, its through the revelation of thespecific enjoyment that he has in his fixation that one must first of allapproach the psychosomatic. This is where one holds out hope that theunconscious, the invention of the unconscious, can be of some use. It is inso far as we hope that we can provide him with the meaning of what it'sabout. The psychosomatic is something which is nevertheless,fundamentally, profoundly rooted in the imaginaq.

Lacan is referring to Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, S E

18. In the SE 'einziger Zug' is translated as single trait.

24 The symptomM. Z.: SOU ich werden, you have more or less transcribed with the workof 'It is thought'. I think of the discourse of the obsessional, who thinks,who rethinks, who cogitates, who in any case also gets to the 'It is thought'.The 'It is thought', can it be understood also as 'disthought' [dkpensk = spent],in the sense in which the 'dis' means from high to low, dismount,disarticulate, andfinally topple the statue? Can 'disthought' be joined to the'It is thought'?-:That is closely related to obsession. The obsessional is mostessentially someone who is thought. He is thought greedily. He is thoughtin a closed circuit. He is thought for himself alone. It's the obsessionals whoinspired that formula in me. You have very well recognized the affinity withthe obsessional, since I didn't say it myself.Mme Vergopoulo: There is something that struck me in your seminar, inrelation to time. The concept is the time of the thing. Within the frameworkof transference, you say, speech has value only as speech, there is neitheremotion, nor projection, nor displacement. I must say that I did not fullyunderstand what the sense of speech is in the tranrference?-:What are you seeking an answer to? On the relationship betweenthe concept and time?-:On the relationship between former speech and current speech. Inthe transference, if the interpretation is properly directed, it's because there isa coincidence betweenformer speech and current speech.-:Occasionally I have to try my hand at something tentative. Thatthe concept is the time is a Hegelian idea But it so happens that, in a thingthat is in my Ecrits, on the Temps logique et l'assertion de certitudeanticipke, I underlined the function of haste in logic, namely that one cannotstay in a state of uncertainty since at some point one has to conclude. There Itry to knot time to logic itself. I distinguished three times, but it's a bit old,I wrote that a long time ago, straight after the war. Up to a point, one alwaysconcludes too soon. But this too soon is simply the avoidance of a too lute.This is definitely linked to the nether regions of logic. The idea of the whole,of the universal, is already prefigured in some way in language. The refusalof the universal is sketched out by Aristotle. and he rejects it, becauseuniversality is essential to his thought. I can progress with a certainlikelihood that the fact that Aristotle rejects it is a clue to the ultimately nonnecessity character of logic. The fact is that only in a living human is therelogic.M. Melo: In your first reply you started from the word serious, and youwere lead to the notion of a series. I am struck by our reaction to this word

Jacques Lacan 25series, which was to line up a series of patients one 4fter the other. There wasthe autistic, the obsessional, the psychosomatic and there war Woman. Thatmade me think of the fact that you came here to speak to us,and that wecame here to listen to you. Here is my question. Don't you think thatbetween transference and countertransference there is really a differencesituated at the level of power?-:It is easy to show that power never rests entirely upon force, pureand simple. Power is always a power tied to speech. It so happens that afterhaving drummed things into people over a long period, people are attracted tome by my chattering which, obviously, would not have this power were itnot in a series, if it weren't converging on something. It's a power of a veryunusual kind, nevertheless. It's not an imperative power. I give orders to noone. But all politics rests on the fact that the entire world is only too happyto have someone who says, Quick march-towards no matter what,moreover. The very principle of the idea of progress is that one believe in theimperative. It's the most original thing in speech, which I have tried toschematise--you will find this in a text called Radiophonie, and which I canno longer recall where I gave. It is a question of the structure of the master'sdiscourse. The master's discourse is characterised by the fact that at a certainpoint there is someone who will make a pretence of commanding. Thischaracter of pretence'of a discourse that would not be a pretence' served asthe title of one of my seminars-is altogether essential. That there issomeone who is happy to take on the function of pretence, ultimatelydelights everybody. If no one pretended to command, where would we go?And by virtue of a real consent founded on the knowledge that there has to besomeone who pretends, those who know march like the rest. What you havejust grasped there, while distancing yourself in certain manner, is somethingof a shadow of power you evoke.0.Flournoy: Another question in the series that Dr Me10 mentioned.Concerning psychosis you introduced the term yoreclosure' which isemployed without people knowing very well what it covers. I asked myselfwhile listening to you whether in the psychotic what is foreclosed isenjoyment. But is it a matter of a real foreclosure, or is it a pretence of aforeclosure? In other words, can psychoanalysis reach a psychotic, or not?:That's a very nice question. Foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father.That leads us to another stage, the stage where it is not only the Name-ofthe-Father, where it's also the Father-of-the-Name. I mean that the father isthe one who names. It is very nicely evoked in Genesis, where there is allthat mimicking of God who tells Adam to name the animals. Everything

26 The symptomoccurs as if there were two stages. God is supposed to know what names theyare, since it's he who created them, supposedly. and then everything happensas if God wanted to put man to the test and see whether he knows how tomimic.There are some stories on this in Joyce-Jacques Auber knows what I amalluding to very well, doesn't he? He who is the first to say gou to the gousewill say oua to the oua. It is obvious that, in the text, it all implies that manis put in a grotesque position. As for me, I would be inclined to believe that,contrary to what shocks a lot of people, it's rather women who inventedlanguage. Moreover, this is what Genesis gives to understand. Women speakwith the serpent-that is, with the phallus. They speak all the more with thephallus, given that it is hetero for them at that time.While this is one of my dreams, one can still ask the question: how did awoman invent this? It can be said that she has an interest in i t Contrary towhat is believed, phallocentrism is Woman's best guarantee. It's never aquestion of anything else. The Virgin Mary with her foot on the head of theserpent means that she supports herself upon it. That has all been imagined,but in an uninspired manner. This can be said without the slightest bit ofseriousness, since someone as crazy as Joyce is necessary in order to put allthat back again.He knew very well that his relations with women were his own uniquesong. He tried to situate the human being in a way that has the sole merit ofdiffering from what has been asserted about it previously. But in the end, allthat, it's the same old story, it's the symptom.What I'm drawn to the most, is that this is the human dimension properlyso-called. That's why I spoke of holy Joyce-the-symptom [Joyce-lesinthBme], l ' l e that, in a single stretch.Translated by Russell Grigg